The present invention relates generally to the control of displayed web data and, more particularly, but not exclusively to both an owner and a visitor to selectively control a widget, in which one example includes a display of a widget to visitors to social networking websites.
Tremendous changes have been occurring in the Internet that influence our everyday lives. For example, online social networks have become the new meeting grounds. They have been called the new power lunch tables and new golf courses for business life in the U.S. Moreover, many people are using such online social networks to reconnect themselves to their friends, their neighborhood, their community, and the world.
The development of such online social networks touch countless aspects of our everyday lives, providing instant access to people of similar mindsets, and enabling us to form partnerships with more people in more ways than ever before. For example, an increasing number of people are creating and/or visiting network blogs (or web logs). Briefly, a blog is a social networking website where a user may provide commentaries, news, graphics, videos, or the like, in a journal style. Such entries may be on virtually any subject, including food, politics, movies, movie stars, videos, music, gambling, shopping, politics, or even personal online diaries.
With users talking amongst each other on social networking sites, many may wonder who is actually viewing these sites. Typically, while a reader might see on the social networking site, such as a blog or other network site, a counter of visits, unless the visitor registers with the network site, others may not know much more about who is visiting a site. Moreover, such displays typically display who is currently visiting a social networking site. However, owners of such sites have little control over who is shown on these displays, often resulting in undesirable associations.
Further, in these cases, visitors typically have to register at each network site that they visit, for unique information about the visitor to be captured. Unfortunately, visitors to various network sites may elect not to register for each site that they visit for a variety of reasons. For example, users may wish to remain anonymous while viewing a particular, or all, sites. In another example, they may select not to register to network sites that they may visit infrequently. Moreover, a visitor may fail to register at the network site or to complete registration that they may start at a network site, due to what is often termed registration fatigue. Such registration fatigue may arise because the registration process is too complex, tedious, or demanding for the visitor. However, not only does such registration fatigue affect the accuracy of a network site's visitor statistics, popularity index, or the like, but, such registration fatigue may result in missed opportunities offered by some of the network sites to the visitor. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.